To make a good steak, many food enthusiasts and budding chefs know the importance of proper seasoning, cooking temperature, and resting time. How to cut beef, however, may be more important than any other cooking technique you currently use. In all cuts of beef, there are long muscular fibers that lay out parallel to one another. The "grain" refers to the direction in which those muscle fibers are aligned. Understanding and recognizing the grain can mean the difference between shoe leather and tender, juicy meat.

Prepare the meat to your liking, whether grilled or pan fried. Temperature, such as rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done can also affect the meat's tenderness. Generally speaking, the longer you cook the meat, the less tender it is. Most steak lovers prefer medium rare as it offers an optimal balance.

Place the steak to the side, and allow it to rest for a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes once it is cooked to your liking. This allows the juices to redistribute inside your steak, which relaxes the muscle. Slicing steak prematurely allows these juices to escape.

Identify the grain in your cut of beef. You can see how the muscle fibers run in the steak by close inspection. They will appear as long bundles of strips and run in the same direction down the length of the meat.

Position a sharp butcher's knife at an angle near the steak's endmost point. Cut these fibers, or the grain, into very small, thin pieces. The thinner you slice, the shorter the grain will be. This results in tender and easy-to-chew pieces.

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Tips

Don't confuse grill marks with the grain. Grill marks are the cooking lines that show where the steak was placed on the grill. Backyard cooks can sometimes confuse the grill marks as grain lines. Be sure to understand the difference.

The smaller the grain on the beef, the less important the slice's angle is. Cuts such as filet mignon or New York strip have softer muscle by definition, so slicing these types of meat may be a bit easier and more forgiving. If you are having difficulty learning to slice beef properly, these cuts are well suited for you.

Different cuts of beef will have different sizes of grain. As a rule, the harder the muscle has to work in the animal, for example a shoulder, the more significant the grain will be. The bigger the grain, the more important the angle at which you cut becomes. Experiment with many different styles of beef while you are mastering the cutting technique.

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